Home Personal Antivirus is a rogue anti-spyware program from
the same family as XP
Deluxe Protector. Like its predecessor, Home Personal Antivirus is installed
onto a computer through the use of Trojans that install it without your permission.
Once installed, the program will be configured to start automatically when your
computer starts. Once running, Home Personal Antivirus will perform a scan and
then state that there are numerous infections that it will not remove until
you purchase the program. The infections that are shown in the scan results,
though, do not exist at all on your computer and are only being shown to trick
you into thinking you are infected.
Home Personal Antivirus screen shot
For more screen shots of this infection click on the image above.
There are a total of 8 images you can view.
While Home Personal Antivirus is running you will be shown a constant stream
of nag screens and security alerts that attempt to further make you think there
is a security issue on your computer. These alerts will range from warnings
that your computer is under attack or that malicious programs have been detected.
An example of one of these alerts is:
Firewall Warning
Hidden file transfer to remote host was detected
Home Personal Antivirus has detected that somebody is trying to transfer your
private data via Internet. We strongly recommend you to block the attack immediately.
Of course when you click on the Block Attack button the program will tell you
that you cannot block it until you purchase the program. You will also see a
screen that impersonates the legitimate Windows Security Center, with the only
difference being that the the imposter will recommend that you purchase Home
Personal Antivirus to protect your computer. As you can see these nag screens
are just a further attempt to scare you into thinking you have a computer problem
and should be ignored.
If you find that you are infected with Home Personal Antivirus, do not act
upon its warnings and purchase the program. If you have already purchased the
program, then we advise you to contact your credit card company and dispute
the charges. Finally, to remove the infection and any related malware please
follow the steps in the guide below.
Threat Classification:
Advanced information:
View Home Personal Antivirus files.
View Home Personal Antivirus Registry Information.
Entries for this program found in the Uninstall Programs control panel:
Home Personal Antivirus
Tools Needed for this fix:
Symptoms that may be in a HijackThis Log:
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [HomeAV] %UserProfile%\Desktop\Home Personal Antivirus\homeav.exe
Guide Updates:
09/30/09 - Initial guide creation.
Automated Removal Instructions for Home Personal Antivirus using Malwarebytes Anti-Malware:
- Print out these instructions as we may need to close every window that is
open later in the fix.
- It is possible that the infection you are trying to remove will not allow
you to download files on the infected computer. If this is the case, then
you will need to download the files requested in this guide on another computer
and then transfer them to the infected computer. You can transfer the files
via a CD/DVD, external drive, or USB flash drive.
- Before we can do anything we must first end the processes that belong to
Home Personal Antivirus
so that it does not interfere with the cleaning procedure. To do this, please
download RKill to your desktop from the following link.
RKill
Download Link - (Download page will open in a new tab or browser window.)
When at the download page, click on the Download Now button
labeled iExplore.exe download link. When you are prompted
where to save it, please save it on your desktop.
- Once it is downloaded, double-click on the iExplore.exe
icon in order to automatically attempt to stop any processes associated with
Home Personal Antivirus
and other Rogue programs. Please be patient while the program looks for various
malware programs and ends them. When it has finished, the black window will
automatically close and you can continue with the next step. If you get a
message that RKill is an infection, do not be concerned. This message is just
a fake warning given by
Home Personal Antivirus
when it terminates programs that may potentially remove it. If you run into
these infections warnings that close RKill, a trick is to leave the warning
on the screen and then run RKill again. By not closing the warning, this typically
will allow you to bypass the malware trying to protect itself so that rkill
can terminate
Home Personal Antivirus
. So, please try running RKill until the malware is no longer running. You
will then be able to proceed with the rest of the guide. If you continue
having problems running RKill, you can download the other renamed versions
of RKill from the rkill
download page. All of the files are renamed copies of RKill, which you
can try instead. Please note that the download page will open in a new browser
window or tab.
Do not reboot your computer after running RKill as the malware programs will
start again.
- Now you should download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, or MBAM, from the following
location and save it to your desktop:
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Download Link
(Download page will open in a new window)
- Once downloaded, close all programs and Windows on your computer, including
this one.
- Double-click on the icon on your desktop named mbam-setup.exe.
This will start the installation of MBAM onto your computer.
- When the installation begins, keep following the prompts in order to continue
with the installation process. Do not make any changes to default settings
and when the program has finished installing, make sure you leave both the
Update Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Launch
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware checked. Then click on the Finish
button. If MalwareBytes' prompts you to reboot, please do not do so.
- MBAM will now automatically start and you will see a message stating that
you should update the program before performing a scan. As MBAM will automatically
update itself after the install, you can press the OK button
to close that box and you will now be at the main program as shown below.
- On the Scanner tab, make sure the the Perform
full scan option is selected and then click on the Scan
button to start scanning your computer for
Home Personal Antivirus
related files.
- MBAM will now start scanning your computer for malware. This process can
take quite a while, so we suggest you go and do something else and periodically
check on the status of the scan. When MBAM is scanning it will look like the
image below.
- When the scan is finished a message box will appear as shown in the image
below.
You should click on the OK button to close the message box and continue with
the
Home Personal Antivirus
removal process.
- You will now be back at the main Scanner screen. At this point you should
click on the Show Results button.
- A screen displaying all the malware that the program found will be shown
as seen in the image below. Please note that the infections found may be different
than what is shown in the image.
You should now click on the Remove Selected button to remove
all the listed malware. MBAM will now delete all of the files and registry
keys and add them to the programs quarantine. When removing the files, MBAM
may require a reboot in order to remove some of them. If it displays a message
stating that it needs to reboot, please allow it to do so. Once your computer
has rebooted, and you are logged in, please continue with the rest of the
steps.
- When MBAM has finished removing the malware, it will open the scan log and
display it in Notepad. Review the log as desired, and then close the Notepad
window.
- You can now exit the MBAM program.
- As many rogues and other malware are installed through vulnerabilities found
in out-dated and insecure programs, it is strongly suggested that you use
Secunia PSI to scan for vulnerable programs on your computer. A tutorial on
how to use Secunia PSI to scan for vulnerable programs can be found here:
How to
detect vulnerable and out-dated programs using Secunia Personal Software Inspector
Your computer should now be free of the
Home Personal Antivirus
program. If your current anti-virus solution let this infection through,
you may want to consider purchasing the
PRO version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware to protect against these types
of threats in the future.
If you are still having problems with your computer after completing these instructions, then please follow the steps outlined in the topic linked below:
Preparation Guide For Use Before Using Malware Removal Tools and Requesting Help
Associated Home Personal Antivirus Files:
%UserProfile%\Desktop\Home Personal Antivirus.LNK
%UserProfile%\Desktop\Home Personal Antivirus
%UserProfile%\Desktop\Home Personal Antivirus\BtCoreIf64.dll
%UserProfile%\Desktop\Home Personal Antivirus\homeav.exe
%UserProfile%\Desktop\Home Personal Antivirus\Microsoft.VC80.CRT.manifest
%UserProfile%\Desktop\Home Personal Antivirus\msvcm80.dll
%UserProfile%\Desktop\Home Personal Antivirus\msvcp80.dll
%UserProfile%\Desktop\Home Personal Antivirus\msvcr80.dll
%UserProfile%\Desktop\Home Personal Antivirus\null_antivirus.dll
%UserProfile%\Desktop\Home Personal Antivirus\pthreadVC2.dll
%UserProfile%\Desktop\Home Personal Antivirus\unistall.exe
%UserProfile%\Desktop\Home Personal Antivirus\vdb
%UserProfile%\Desktop\Home Personal Antivirus\vdb\daily.zvd
%UserProfile%\Start Menu\Home Personal Antivirus.LNK
File Location Notes:
%UserProfile% refers to the current user's profile folder. By default, this is C:\Documents and Settings\<Current User> for Windows 2000/XP, C:\Users\<Current User> for Windows Vista/7/8, and c:\winnt\profiles\<Current User> for Windows NT.
Associated Home Personal Antivirus Windows Registry Information:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Home Personal Antivirus
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Home Personal Antivirus
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run "HomeAV"
This is a self-help guide. Use at your own risk.
BleepingComputer.com can not be held responsible for problems that may occur by using this information. If you would like help with any of these fixes, you can ask for malware removal assistance in our Virus, Trojan, Spyware, and Malware Removal Logs forum.
If you have any questions about this self-help guide then please post those questions in our Am I infected? What do I do? and someone will help you.
